He served the Realm for twenty-two years. Now the Realm wants him dead.
Rowan Isemark goes into the Ashring as a condemned man - a Kingsworn charged with the murder of a noble, facing trial-by-combat against an opponent chosen to make the outcome certain. He has no allies, no defense, and no path to survival that anyone has considered. He has one thing: twenty-two years of reading how systems work from the inside.
In the gallery above, Princess Maerith has spent the night reading the same trial - not as justice, but as architecture. She has seen the machinery that built this verdict. She cannot yet see what Isemark is about to find buried in his own oath.
Some clauses were written to be forgotten. Not by everyone.